US Supreme Court allows states to prosecute illegal immigrants

On Tuesday, March 3, the US Supreme Court expanded the state's ability to use criminal laws against illegal immigrants and other persons who do not have work permits in the United States, writes Reuters.

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Resolution 5-4, adopted with the participation of a conservative majority, overturned the 2017 Kansas Supreme Court ruling, which annulled the conviction of three restaurant employees for fraudulent use of social security numbers by others.

In a conclusion issued by Judge Samuel Alito, the Supreme Court found that Kansas did not commit unlawful attacks on the federal government in relation to immigration policy.

Four liberal judges did not agree with the decision. Although a 1986 federal law called the Immigration Reform and Control Act does not explicitly prohibit states from pursuing such harassment, judges stated that, in the dissenting opinion of Judge Stephen Breyer, the general purpose of the law transfers cases of work permit fraud to “only the federal to the government. ”

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Presidential Administration Donald Trump has supported the Kansas affair. Trump has made tough immigration policies central to his presidency and his re-election campaign in 2020. Kansas is one of several conservative states that have tried to crack down on illegal immigrants.

In Breyer’s particular opinion, allowing a prosecution similar to the Kansas case “opens up a huge loophole,” allowing states to control federal work permits.

Although immigration-related labor fraud is a federal matter, the Kansas state authorities claimed that their harassment was not related to immigration and was not contrary to federal immigration law. Kansas argued that a decision in favor of immigrants would undermine the ability of the state to deal with the growing problem of identity theft.

Immigrant rights groups have stated that giving state authorities the right to prosecute employment fraud will allow them to take control of immigration policies.

Ramiro Garcia, Donaldo Morales and Guadalupe Ochoa Lara did not have work permits in the United States and provided their employers with social security numbers that were not their own.

A social security number is used to identify people for employment and tax purposes. People entering the country illegally are not assigned social security numbers that the US government provides to all legal residents.

The case focused on the employment verification process in accordance with federal immigration law requiring employers to certify in a special form I-9 that the employee has the right to work. The law also states that the form "cannot be used for any purpose other than for the enforcement of this law."

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Although the federal government has the sole right to prosecute individuals for providing fraudulent information in the I-9 employment verification process, the state has prosecuted three people for using the same false information in different forms used to withhold taxes from wages.

On March 3, Alito wrote in his decree: “The submission of tax returns is fundamentally not connected with the federal employment verification system.”

By giving the states some discretion with regard to illegal immigrants, the decree could also provide California with the means to protect its so-called asylum policy. This policy limits cooperation with federal immigration authorities to protect some illegal immigrants from deportation.

The Trump administration sued California and appealed to the Supreme Court after losing in a lower court. The administration also sued other states and localities for asylum policies.

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